Launched in 2000 as a project of the OECD, the PISA is administered every three years to nationally representative samples of students in each OECD country and in a growing number of partner countries and subnational units such as Shanghai. The 74 education systems that participated in the latest PISA study, conducted during 2009, represented more than 85% of the global economy and included virtually all of the United States’ major trading partners, making it a particularly useful source of information on U.S. students’ relative standing.

The United States’ historical advantage in terms of educational attainment has long since eroded, however. U.S. high-school graduation rates peaked in 1970 at roughly 80% and have declined slightly since, a trend often masked in official statistics by the growing number of students receiving alternative credentials, such as a General Educational Development (GED) certificate.

in many respects the U.S. higher education system remains the envy of the world. Despite recent concerns about rapidly increasing costs, declining degree completion rates, and the quality of instruction available to undergraduate students, U.S. universities continue to dominate world rankings of research productivity. The 2011 Academic Rankings of World Universities, an annual publication of the Shanghai Jiao Tong University, placed eight U.S. universities within the global top 10, 17 within the top 20, and 151 within the top 500. A 2008 RAND study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Defense found that 63% of the world’s most highly cited academic papers in science and technology were produced by researchers based in the United States. Moreover, the United States remains the top destination for graduate students studying outside of their own countries, attracting 19% of all foreign students in 2008. This rate is nine percentage points higher than the rate of the closest U.S. competitor, the United Kingdom.

At one time it was left to teachers and administrators to decide exactiy what level of math proficiency should be expected of students. But, increasingly, states, and the federal government itself, have established proficiency levels that students are asked to reach. A national proficiency standard was set by the board that governs the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), which is administered by the U.S. Department of Education and generally known as the nation’s report card.

a crosswalk between NAEP and PISA. The crosswalk is made possible by the fact that representative (but separate) samples of the high-school graduating Class of 2011 took the NAEP and PISA math and reading examinations. NAEP tests were taken in 2007 when the Class of 2011 was in 8th grade and PISA tested 15-year-olds in 2009, most of whom are members of the Class of 2011. Given that NAEP identified 32 percent of U.S. 8th-grade students as proficient in math, the PISA equivalent is estimated by calculating the minimum score reached by the top-performing 32 percent of U.S. students participating in the 2009 PISA test. (See methodological sidebar for further details.)

++++++++++ dissertations ++++++++++++++

CAO perspectives: The role of general education objectives in career and technical programs in the United States and Europe

But the rationale that I find most disturbing—despite, or perhaps because of, the fact that it’s rarely made explicit—is the idea that technology will increase our efficiency…at teaching the same way that children have been taught for a very long time. Perhaps it hasn’t escaped your notice that ed tech is passionately embraced by very traditional schools: Their institutional pulse quickens over whatever is cutting-edge: instruction that’s blended, flipped, digitally personalized.

We can’t answer the question “Is tech useful in schools?” until we’ve grappled with a deeper question: “What kinds of learning should be taking place in those schools?”

Tarting up a lecture with a SmartBoard, loading a textbook on an iPad, looking up facts online, rehearsing skills with an “adaptive learning system,” writing answers to the teacher’s (or workbook’s) questions and uploading them to Google Docs—these are examples of how technology may make the process a bit more efficient or less dreary but does nothing to challenge the outdated pedagogy. To the contrary: These are shiny things that distract us from rethinking our approach to learning and reassure us that we’re already being innovative.

But as I argued not long ago, we shouldn’t confuse personalized learning with personal learning. The first involves adjusting the difficulty level of prefabricated skills-based exercises based on students’ test scores, and it requires the purchase of software. The second involves working with each student to create projects of intellectual discovery that reflect his or her unique needs and interests, and it requires the presence of a caring teacher who knows each child well.a recent review found that studies of tech-based personalized instruction “show mixed results ranging from modest impacts to no impact” – despite the fact that it’s remarkably expensive.

an article in Education Week, “a host of national and regional surveys suggest that teachers are far more likely to use tech to make their own jobs easier and to supplement traditional instructional strategies than to put students in control of their own learning.”

OECD reportednegative outcomes when students spent a lot of time using computers, while Stanford University’s Center for Research on Education Outcomes (CREDO) concluded that online charter schools were basically a disaster.

Larry Cuban, Sherry Turkle, Gary Stager, and Will Richardson.

Emily Talmage points out, uncannily aligned with the wish list of the Digital Learning Council, a group consisting largely of conservative advocacy groups and foundations, and corporations with a financial interest in promoting ed tech.

When do you believe technology enhances learning, and when do you believe
it does not?

How has technology impacted your own learning?

Does your school, library, or organization have a specific learning philosophy that guides ed-tech purchases and implementation? If yes, what is that philosophy?
More than 450 responses were received (those that agreed for their answers to be
shared publicly can be seen at http://www.modernlearning.com).

For the purposes of this report, “educational technology” (often abbreviated as “ed tech”) is assumed to refer principally to the use of modern electronic computing and other high-tech, mostly Internet-enabled, devices and services in education.

When it becomes a distraction.
● When there is little or no preparation for it.
● When just used for testing / score tracking.
● When used for consuming and not creating, or just for rote learning.
● When “following the education trends: everyone else is doing it.”
● When the tech is “an end rather than means” (also stated as, ”when I don’t have a plan or learning goal…”). We found this very significant, and it is the focus of Observation 6.
● When there is a lack of guidance in how to effectively use new ed tech tools (“when there is no PD”). This is the focus of Observation 4.
● Finally, when it “gets in the way of real time talk / sharing.” Forgetting that the tech “cannot mentor, motivate, show beauty, interact fully, give quality attention, [or] contextualize.” Also: ”outcomes related to acquiring the skills and attitudes cannot be enhanced by technology.” As mentioned in the introduction, this would be missing the “human factor.” One respondent
captured this as follows: “3 reasons tech innovation fails: Misunderstanding Human Motivation, Human Learning, or Human Systems.”

Networked information technology has rendered the words “teacher” and “student” more ambiguous. YouTube tutorials and social-media discussions, just to cite a couple of obvious examples, have made it abundantly clear that at any given moment anyone—regardless of age or background—can be a learner or a teacher, or even both at once.

IP‐Please, design and development of an educational game on IT‐security
Peter Mozelius, Charlotte Lesley and Ola Olsson
Department of Computer and Systems Sciences, Stockholm University, Sweden

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/308947931_IP-Please_design_and_development_of_an_educational_game_on_IT-security
Abstract:
Game‐based learning is a research field with rich discussions on the use of games in educational contexts. Many of the educational games that exist today focus on subjects such
as Language learning, Mathematics and History, and fewer on subjects in Computer Science
and IT‐security. Dissemination of information about IT‐security is important in today’s digital
society not at least in the industry. As an example many firewalls today are misconfigured
leading to decreased security at the same time as it is hard to motivate students or employees to read long detailed and tedious PDF‐files with security information. Might
things like firewall configuration instead be learnt by an educational game and how to design
a learning game that could be used in university courses on IT‐security?

Marcin ZaródWhile at the same time in their kung-fu schools they have been using models like “station rotation”, “peer-learning”, “immediate feedback”, mastery learning, even some elements of gamification (like badges-like colour belts showing the mastery on some level and unblocking access to higher-level routines available only for the more advanced students), etc for hundreds of years…. And I am not joking. Just ask anybody who does some kung-fu under the watchful eye of a good coach (sifu).
A great example of a “peer learning” session on the enclosed photo (taken at a kung-fu training in Poland, not in China smile emoticon

China has now reshaped its national exam to focus on a broader range of topics and cognitive skills and, in turn, move away from teacher-dominated lecturing. The new test requires that students employ complex analytical skills, mixed with broader knowledge across various subjects.

A Cautionary Tale To Be Had From Swedish School Reforms

One of the issues dividing the two main parliamentary blocs is whether there should be a cap on profit margins for publicly funded private schools.

The Swedish school system has received considerable internationalattention in recent years due to alarming test scores in the OECD’s international PISA study

Segregation is one of the most serious social problems facing Sweden and many other wealthy nations.

A recent report (the English title would be “A Nation Divided – School Choice and Segregation in Sweden”) that I have co-authored for the Stockholm based think tank Arena Idé shows that well-educated and Swedish-born families increasingly opt out of schools where the children have parents with lower educational attainments and an immigrant background. We also show that this “white flight” in Swedish municipalities throughout the country is increased by school choice and other reforms introduced in the early 1990s, whereby publicly financed private schools are allowed to compete with municipal schools for school vouchers allotted to each individual student.

The results in our study should be viewed in light of two recent reports: one from the OECDand another from UNICEF, both highlighting the inequality in the Swedish school system.

The results make it painfully clear that the Swedish school system effectively works against the very idea that schools should level the playing field for students from all backgrounds and give every child equal opportunity. Even after the rise of right-wing populism in Sweden, our established political parties have proven themselves unable, or unwilling, to rein in the highly unregulated Swedish school market.

Publisher / Organization: The University of Illinois at Chicago- University Library

Year founded: 1996

Description: First Monday is among the very first open access journals in the EdTech field. The journal’s subject matter encompasses the full range of Internet issues, including educational technologies, social media and web search. Contributors are urged via author guidelines to use simple explanations and less complex sentences and to be mindful that a large proportion of their readers are not part of academia and do not have English as a first language.

Description: This journal aims to: provide a vehicle for scholarly presentation and exchange of information between professionals, researchers and practitioners in the technology-enhanced education field; contribute to the advancement of scientific knowledge regarding the use of technology and computers in higher education; and inform readers about the latest developments in the application of information technologies (ITs) in higher education learning, training, research and management.

Description: Online Learning promotes the development and dissemination of new knowledge at the intersection of pedagogy, emerging technology, policy, and practice in online environments. The journal has been published for over 20 years as the Journal of Asynchronous Learning Networks (JALN) and recently merged with the Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (JOLT).

Description: Educational Technology & Society seeks academic articles on the issues affecting the developers of educational systems and educators who implement and manage these systems. Articles should discuss the perspectives of both communities – the programmers and the instructors. The journal is currently still accepting submissions for ongoing special issues, but will cease publication in the future as the editors feel that the field of EdTech is saturated with high quality publications.

Description: The Australasian Journal of Educational Technology aims to promote research and scholarship on the integration of technology in tertiary education, promote effective practice, and inform policy. The goal is to advance understanding of educational technology in post-school education settings, including higher and further education, lifelong learning, and training.

Print Journals

DESCRIPTION: The Internet and Higher Education is devoted to addressing contemporary issues and future developments related to online learning, teaching, and administration on the Internet in post-secondary settings. Articles should significantly address innovative deployments of Internet technology in instruction and report on research to demonstrate the effects of information technology on instruction in various contexts in higher education.

DESCRIPTION: The journal publishes theoretical perspectives, methodological developments and empirical research that demonstrate whether and how applications of instructional/educational technology systems, networks, tools and resources lead to improvements in formal and non-formal education at all levels, from early years through to higher, technical and vocational education, professional development and corporate training.

Description: Computers & Education aims to increase knowledge and understanding of ways in which digital technology can enhance education, through the publication of high quality research, which extends theory and practice.

Description: TechTrends targets professionals in the educational communication and technology field. It provides a vehicle that fosters the exchange of important and current information among professional practitioners. Among the topics addressed are the management of media and programs, the application of educational technology principles and techniques to instructional programs, and corporate and military training.

Description: Advances in technology and the growth of e-learning to provide educators and trainers with unique opportunities to enhance learning and teaching in corporate, government, healthcare, and higher education. IJEL serves as a forum to facilitate the international exchange of information on the current research, development, and practice of e-learning in these sectors.

Led by an Editorial Review Board of leaders in the field of e-Learning, the Journal is designed for the following audiences: researchers, developers, and practitioners in corporate, government, healthcare, and higher education. IJEL is a peer-reviewed journal.

Description: JCMST is a highly respected scholarly journal which offers an in-depth forum for the interchange of information in the fields of science, mathematics, and computer science. JCMST is the only periodical devoted specifically to using information technology in the teaching of mathematics and science.

Just as researchers build reputation over time that can be depicted (in part) through quantitative measures such as h-index and i10-index, journals are also compared based on the number of citations they receive..

Description: JEMH is designed to provide a multi-disciplinary forum to present and discuss research, development and applications of multimedia and hypermedia in education. It contributes to the advancement of the theory and practice of learning and teaching in environments that integrate images, sound, text, and data.

Description: JTATE serves as a forum for the exchange of knowledge about the use of information technology in teacher education. Journal content covers preservice and inservice teacher education, graduate programs in areas such as curriculum and instruction, educational administration, staff development instructional technology, and educational computing.

Publisher / Organization: Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education (AACE)

YEAR FOUNDED: 2015

DESCRIPTION: The Journal of Online Learning Research (JOLR) is a peer-reviewed, international journal devoted to the theoretical, empirical, and pragmatic understanding of technologies and their impact on primary and secondary pedagogy and policy in primary and secondary (K-12) online and blended environments. JOLR is focused on publishing manuscripts that address online learning, catering particularly to the educators who research, practice, design, and/or administer in primary and secondary schooling in online settings. However, the journal also serves those educators who have chosen to blend online learning tools and strategies in their face-to-face classroom.

SCImago Journal Rank (SJR indicator) measures the influence of journals based on the number of citations the articles in the journal receive and the importance or prestige of the journals where such citations come from. The SJR indicator is a free journal metric which uses an algorithm similar to PageRank and provides an open access alternative to the journal impact factor in the Web of Science Journal Citation Report. The portal draws from the information contained in the Scopus database (Elsevier B.V.).

Introduced by Elsevier in 2004, Scopus is an abstract and citation database that covers nearly 18,000 titles from more than 5,000 publishers. It offers journal metrics that go beyond just journals to include most serial titles, including supplements, special issues and conference proceedings. Scopus offers useful information such as the total number of citations, the total number of articles published, and the percent of articles cited.

Anne-Wil Harzing:

“Citations are not just a reflection of the impact that a particular piece of academic work has generated. Citations can be used to tell stories about academics, journals and fields of research, but they can also be used to distort stories”.

ResearchGate is a social networking site for scientists and researchers to share papers, ask and answer questions, and find collaborators. The community was founded in May 2008. Today it has over 14 million members.

Google Scholar allows users to search for digital or physical copies of articles, whether online or in libraries. It indexes “full-text journal articles, technical reports, preprints, theses, books, and other documents, including selected Web pages that are deemed to be ‘scholarly. It comprises an estimated 160 million documents.

Academia.edu is a social-networking platform for academics to share research papers. You can upload your own work, and follow the updates of your peers. Founded in 2008, the network currently has 59 million users, and adding 20 million documents.

The ORCHID (Open Researcher and Contributor ID) is a nonproprietary alphanumeric code to uniquely identify scientific and other academic authors and contributors. It provides a persistent identity for humans, similar to content-related entities on digital networks that utilize digital object identifiers (DOIs). The organization offers an open and independent registry intended to be the de facto standard for contributor identification in research and academic publishing.

The Scopus Author Identifier assigns a unique number to groups of documents written by the same author via an algorithm that matches authorship based on a certain criteria. If a document cannot be confidently matched with an author identifier, it is grouped separately. In this case, you may see more than one entry for the same author.

Consider the information they handle every day. School districts in America today are complex, sophisticated businesses, not only managing multiple applications across multiple platforms, but also managing people and equipment in the real world, like bus fleets, library systems, and cafeterias.

you will find admins working with an average of 30 onsite and online platforms. That’s 30 systems to feed with data and update. The kicker is that those systems might not be on speaking terms with each other.

Interoperability is a multi-headed issue for any IT professional, but in the K-12 education world it is especially complex. These unique complexities can be distilled down to eight truths, and may explain why vendors who have been very successful in other IT verticals never seem to meet expectations in K-12.

The Solution Cannot Be Point-to-Point

Data from many active sources is profoundly difficult to keep current, especially when considering the different protocols used for each particular point-to-point integration.

There Must Be Multiple Ways of Moving Data

A successful broker/dashboard must be able to accommodate all of these integration methods. The broker needs to support it as well as the industry’s existing standards, such as SIF and CSV.

The System Must Merge Disparate Feeds

Data comes into educational systems from a variety of feeds, including CSVs and file sharing. Handling all these feeds develops a vital function, coveted by IT professionals and system admins everywhere: a comprehensive representation of the data truth of your district.

Your Data Solution Must Be Bidirectional

Different systems don’t always talk to each other politely, and with some districts using as many as 30 applications, writing grades back to the SIS can get thorny.

We Need a Flexible Data Model

some of those free or low-cost integrations are profoundly rigid and can’t accommodate the data reality of school districts.

We Must Deal with “Dumb” End Points

In the world of district data, we are moving toward REST APIs and other unintelligent end points. There is no inherent logic in an API that tells the system how to move data. And as mentioned earlier, many legacy systems still depend on CSV’s for data.

Integration Belongs in the Cloud but Must Accommodate On-Premise Apps

know the cloud actually is an ideal setting for interoperability, especially since so many of our applications are cloud-based. It gives you maximum visibility, maximum diagnostic capability and manageability. You can manage from anywhere, anytime.

Be Multi-Tenant with Supervisory Capability

For areas where intermediate units or a Board of Cooperative Educational Standards (BOCES) provide IT services to districts, the system admins need a big picture approach. The integration platform must allow the IU or BOCES to troubleshoot, diagnose, manage, and support multiple districts in one dashboard, but only show district personnel data belonging to their organization. State education agencies also have this need.

Although there will be a “perfect” and direct transfer of information to everyone with or without educators, students will still need to come to class to benefit from the wisdom and experience of their teachers.

“So in the future, there’s going to be a balance, a balance between ‘e-instruction’ and mentoring. And teachers, more and more, will be in the business of mentoring [and] personal experience because you cannot get that on the Internet.”

Those aspects of “mentoring” and “career guidance” are especially important to Kaku, who said that teachers must push students to where the jobs will be in the future.